I have a plate chiller and typically use a hop spider/sock to prevent them from clogging my plate chiller. I am tempted to experiment with NOT using the hop spider and instead doing a whirlpool at the end of my boil and letting the break settle out. But I'm still nervous that I'm going to suck a bunch of hop debris into my plate chiller and clog it up.

Yeah, I was hung over a bit on brew day and dumped the hops on the outside of the hop filter. Doh! I didn't whirlpool, just ran it through the plate chiller. Everything worked fine. It just took a solid hour flushing the chiller before no hop material came out.